Poems eBook

A Living Land, such as Nature plann’d,
When she hollowed our harbours deep,
When she bade the grain wave o’er the plain,
And the oak wave over the steep:
When she bade the tide roll deep and wide,
From its source to the ocean strand,
Oh! it was not to slaves she gave these waves,
But to sons of a Living Land!
Sons who have eyes and hearts to prize
The worth of a Living Land!

Oh! when shall we lose the hostile hues,
That have kept us so long apart?
Or cease from the strife, that is crushing the life
From out of our mother’s heart?
Could we lay aside our doubts and our pride,
And join in a common band,
One hour would see our country free,
A young and a Living Land!
With a nation’s heart and a nation’s part,
A free and a Living Land!

106. Thomas Davis.

THE DEAD TRIBUNE.

The awful shadow of a great man’s
death
Falls on this land, so sad
and dark before—­
Dark with the famine and the fever breath,
And mad dissensions knawing
at its core.
Oh! let us hush foul discord’s maniac
roar,
And make a mournful truce,
however brief,
Like hostile armies when the day is o’er!
And thus devote the night-time
of our grief
To tears and prayers for him, the great departed chief.

In “Genoa the Superb” O’Connell
dies—­
That city of Columbus by the
sea,
Beneath the canopy of azure skies,
As high and cloudless as his
fame must be.
Is it mere chance or higher destiny
That brings these names together?
One, the bold
Wanderer in ways that none had trod but
he—­
The other, too, exploring
paths untold;
One a new world would seek, and one would save the
old!

With childlike incredulity we cry,
It cannot be that great career
is run,
It cannot be but in the eastern sky
Again will blaze that mighty
world-watch’d sun!
Ah! fond deceit, the east is dark and
dun,
Death’s black, impervious
cloud is on the skies;
Toll the deep bell, and fire the evening
gun,
Let honest sorrow moisten
manly eyes:
A glorious sun has set that never more shall rise!

Brothers, who struggle yet in Freedom’s
van,
Where’er your forces
o’er the world are spread,
The last great champion of the rights
of man—­
The last great Tribune of
the world is dead!
Join in our grief, and let our tears be
shed
Without reserve or coldness
on his bier;
Look on his life as on a map outspread—­
His fight for freedom—­freedom
far and near—­
And if a speck should rise, oh! hide it with a tear!

To speak his praises little need have
we
To tell the wonders wrought
within these waves
Enough, so well he taught us to be free,
That even to him we could
not kneel as slaves.
Oh! let our tears be fast-destroying graves,
Where doubt and difference
may for ever lie,
Buried and hid as in sepulchral caves;
And let love’s fond
and reverential eye
Alone behold the star new risen in the sky!